Well, it's official: people are getting soft.
This past Thursday, the Illinois House voted to ban the death penalty with a final vote of 60-54 in favor of the ban – a close call. The bill is now moving on to the Senate.
For Illinois, this ban has been a decade in-the-making. Former Governor George Ryan put a freeze on all executions when he was in office in January 2000. After over twelve people who had been sent to Death Row were later found innocent, Ryan issued the moratorium on death penalties. In 2003, Ryan removed death penalty sentences from the other 167 criminals and emptied Death Row.
But Illinois’ Death Row may not be empty forever. Even if the ban passes in the Senate, it has to be approved by current Governor Pat Quinn, who is said to still favor the death penalty.
This debate has been going on for years, and it’s not an easy one to resolve. It always brings up interesting moral questions. What are your views on the death penalty? Should there be one? Do we need one? Those are sometimes two different questions.
Which is more valuable, preserving a life or pursuing justice?
1 comment:
Sometimes preserving life is pursuing justice. Rotting away in prison with no chance of parole in some ways is worst than death. In jail the individual does not have much opportunity to do much good or really live, and carrying out a life sentence gives the convicted the opportunity to think about their crime. A more common argument against the death penalty that I agree with is that the "innocent family and friends of criminals must also go through in the time leading up to and during the execution"(http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/thoughts.html#anti). These people did not do anything wrong and they are being punished for a crime that they did not commit. Also I am a strong believer that you can not fight violence with more violence.
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